Chief wants his officers ready to respond to any scenario
(Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, there was another school shooting, this one at a STEM school just outside of Denver.)
The more training the better”.
Town of Highlands Police Chief Frank Pierri believes that in any career field, practicing and being well prepared makes you more confident. But he particularly believes that is so when it comes to policing. That’s why he is doing everything he can to make sure his officers are trained in as many different skills and tactics as they can be.
“Police officers never know what any situation will entail until they get into it,” he said. “But by training in a variety of different skills, and training with other officers, we become more confident in what we do.”
That’s why he was so determined to get as many of his officers trained in the ALERRT (Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training) Program as he could this past winter.
Pierri said that across the country, police officers are receiving this same training, so that all law enforcement will find it easy to work together in a real situation.
“If we’ve all been trained the same way, we’ll, again, be able to work together more confidently,” he said. “Small departments often have limited manpower. The goal is for all police officers to be able to work together as a team.”
The THPD received a $10,000 New York State Law Enforcement Terrorism Program grant, administered via the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. With it, the THPD was able to host a 16-hour ALERRT training session within O’Neill High School in March. About two dozen officers participated, mostly THPD officers, but also some Highland Falls, Cornwall, Washingtonville and Crawford officers.
The cops were quite literally “in school” for the first eight hours, using a classroom, and then used the halls, classrooms, public areas, restrooms, etc. for active shooter training. Obviously, there were no students or school personnel in the building during the training.
“We have learned in recent years — since Columbine, really — that police need to get into a building where there is a problem right away,” Pierri said. “The longer we wait outside, the more damage can be done.”
That’s the basis of the training — that officers arrive on scene, say a school, and work together to “immediately respond to whatever is going on”, whether that be an armed person, a distraught person or something else.
“We never know what we will find until we get in there and size up the situation,” he said.
They learned to properly mount stairwells and check classrooms; they familiarized themselves with the large building; they took note of windows, doors, cameras, exits; and they drilled on made-up scenarios. The officers used Simunition weapons, Pierri said, which fire a paint cartridge — “they make things more realistic”.
Pierri said he is grateful to the Sheriff’s Department for facilitating the training, as well as the Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District for allowing them to use O’Neill High School. He also said he’s appreciative to the Town Board for allowing him to seek out this type of training for his officers.
The safety of students in local schools is always a priority, the chief said.
The Sheriff’s Department deputies assigned to the three schools in the HF-FMCSD are all ALERRT trained, Pierri said, and his officers continue to get to know those officers.
“We still stop by the schools on a daily basis,” he said. “I think we are lucky to have them in town every day, and we work very closely with them.”
The same goes for the Highland Falls Police who we back up in the Intermediate School, and the military police, who we work with sometimes as well.”
